A cellular radio access network is a collection of cells that each includes at least one base station capable of transmitting and relaying signals to subscribers' wireless devices. A “cell” generally denotes a distinct area of a mobile network that utilizes a particular frequency or range of frequencies for transmission of data. A typical base station is a tower to which are affixed a number of antennas that transmit and receive the data over the particular frequency. Wireless devices, such as cellular or mobile phones, smart phones, camera phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and laptop computers, may initiate or otherwise transmit a signal at the designated frequency to the base station to initiate a call or data session and begin transmitting data.
Mobile access networks convert cellular signals, e.g., Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) signals, Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signals or Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) signals, received at a base station from wireless devices into Internet protocol (IP) packets for transmission within packet-based networks. A number of standards have been proposed to facilitate this conversion and transmission of cellular signals to IP packets, such as a general packet radio service (GPRS) standardized by the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) Association, an evolution of UMTS referred to as Long Term Evolution (LTE), mobile IP standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), as well as other standards proposed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GGP/2) and the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) forum.
A typical 3GPP mobile access network, or “mobile network,” includes a core packet-switched network, a transport network, and one or more radio access networks. The core packet-switched network for the mobile network establishes logical connections, known as bearers, among the many service nodes on a path between a wireless device, attached to one of the radio access networks, and a packet data network (PDN). The service nodes then utilize the bearers to transport subscriber traffic exchanged between the wireless device and the PDN, which may include, for example, the Internet, an enterprise intranet, a layer 3 VPN, and a service provider's private network. Various PDNs provide a variety of packet-based data services to wireless devices to enable the wireless devices to exchange service data with application or other servers of the PDNs.
The increasing number and bandwidth requirements of services available to mobile devices pressures available mobile network resources. Policy and charging control (PCC) provides network operators with the means to manage service connections to ensure an efficient utilization of core, transport, and radio network resources. Different services, such as Internet, E-mail, voice, and multimedia, have different quality of service (QoS) requirements that, moreover, may vary by user. To manage service connections in a consistent manner for a mobile network that simultaneously carries multiple different services for multiple users, PCC provides a centralized control to determine an appropriate transport path for services, determine QoS requirements for the services, and determine resource allocation necessary to ensure QoS characteristics of transport paths sufficient to meet the QoS requirements for the various services.